This can translate into a scenario like the one some years ago when two twentysomething men ventured into Pat Sin Leng country park. The temperature was above 30 degrees Celsius as they rode their bicycles, without water. Soon lost and dehydrated, they creatively solved their fix: they shouldered their bikes and climbed the nearest peak until their mobile phones were able to pick up a signal in the remote location. Chopper to the rescue. 'This is probably the easiest place in the world to get a helicopter ride,' Fong laments.

Sometimes, the humour works in reverse. In 1994, a climber and his girlfriend, planning to spend the night on a ledge two-thirds of the way up Lion Rock, were sipping hot chocolate at 2am when the rescuing abseilers descended on them. 'We were perfectly all right but they insisted on 'rescuing' us, anyway,' climber Paul Briggs was quoted as saying. A nearby resident mistook the couple's candlelight for a distress signal and notified the unit, which must treat all rescues with gravitas, Fong explains.

Emancipation from nature, however, requires manpower, and for Luk, May and June are recruitment months. The glamorous ads on TV of crack commandos abseiling from helicopters, however, aren't quite cutting it. 'Kids don't want to join,' he moans, noting 'an obvious trend' among youth culture towards self-expression and rebellion, not uniforms and teamwork - for nominal pay - in the name of civic duty.

It's an attitude Luk might have a hard time relating to, having been a civil servant all his life. Apart from a permanent staff post with Mountain Rescue, his only other paying job has been in the Lands Department, where he's currently a chief land executive. Luk, in fact, was weaned on spit-shines and spot inspections, having first worn a crew cut at age 16, when he joined the Red Cross. In a city with little history of its own armed forces, he's perhaps Hong Kong's closest version of a career military man.

And he's counting on his disciplinary ethic to return 'professionalism' to the unit, starting with the pesky task of finding recruits. His zealous plan includes delivering rousing speeches to the present batch of CAS volunteers, an idea CAS superiors initially quashed, deeming it 'not in the best interest' of the whole organisation as he could potentially steal talent from other divisions. But weeks of incessant arguing eventually broke them.

Provided Luk can sniff out prospects, they are invited to 'attach to the company' for a year's probation if they pass his interview and physical fitness test. But what follows is the real source of attrition: the 'height scare test'. Newcomers are dangled off Lion Rock to see if they can make sense of some questions with more than 100 metres of sheer drop below them. Could Luk's daughter pass the test, whom he hopes will join the company when she becomes eligible in 18 months, at age 18? At Shek O headland, he puts his hands on his hips, gazes seaward, inhales: 'Yeah'. 'I taught her to swim at age four by kicking her in the water,' he says, his hair greying, eyeglasses tortoise-shelled. 'Sometimes you just have to be tough.' And it's that managerial style that an element at Mountain Rescue - 'naughty guys', Luk calls them - is finding a bit abrasive. Like the recent Sunday when everyone lined up for a spot inspection at the Kowloon City headquarters before embarking on cliff-rescue exercises - after falling out, half of them had to shine their shoes and iron their trousers. 'Discipline,' Luk says. 'We have to teach them discipline.' 'Our job is not to face people,' counters one member. 'He only knows how to manage in an old style.' 'I don't mind making them do that,' Luk retorts, nor issuing an order that everyone snap off salutes when passing commanding officers. 'I have to be the bad guy, that's why they hired me - I have thick skin.' A paradox of the unit is that while nearly all posts are voluntary, attendance at bi-monthly field exercises and at weekly classroom training is compulsory - often making the unit an arch-nemesis of housewives competing for their husbands' time. 'My wife is screaming at me' for having re-joined the unit, Luk says, estimating it consumes up to 20 hours a week of his time.

Such competing interests in part account for probably the greatest manifestation of the troop's flagging motivation: withering attendance at the field exercises, held every other Sunday. 'Training's boring,' says a five-year member. But already attendance has doubled, thanks to Luk's demanding creed. Further, recognising that more experienced members find training tedious, he's looking at timing rescue events and awarding prizes to the fastest team. Luk is also attacking disarray by establishing a formal training and assessment system, including a logbook to document completed training and implementing year-end test reviews of skills. A victim of disorganisation, Wayne Yim Shing-wing, 26, recalled that when he joined the unit a year ago there weren't enough study guides for all the recruits. Ever 'moving towards professionalism', Luk has even re-designed the uniforms - twice.

For all his doughty demeanour though, Luk is equally aware of the backlash he could inspire in his role as cleaner - not just in the minds of his subordinates, but also in those of his fellow commanders. The sunset squadron includes Nelson Lee, 57, who was company commander for the past five years until Luk superseded him - he's now assistant technical forces commander - and Law Shu-kwong, 48, a team supervisor; both joined the unit with Luk in the inaugural year. Tim Leung chi-tim, 43, senior operations and training officer, was trained by a 25-year-old Luk when he joined in 1972.'Even then,' Leung says, 'he was tough.' At the base of Shek O's cliffs where the four chieftains are huddled together, Luk illustrates his sensitivity to the situation - in-between barking rescue pointers to cadets. 'I'm not in charge,' he deferentially says, pointing to Lee. 'I'm not the leader, you are,' Lee replies. 'We couldn't do anything without Mr Leung,' Luk adds. 'Oh no, CAS needs people like him,' Leung shoots back. And so they go, passing unwanted praise like jittery rock jocks passing each other the rope to clip on to and lead a grippy first pitch of some Spiderman route.

Luk's greatest adversary, however, might prove the bureaucrats. The CAS, like many government organisations, has undergone funding cutbacks. For two years now company commanders haven't been able to travel to Britain for joint training with the Royal Air Force at the National Mountaineering Centre. Yim talks of 'scarce resources' and steel rescue backboards that are more than 20 years old and three times the weight of their newer graphite counterparts. 'We're being asked to do more but given less,' says Leung.

Some of the Golden Boys though, their careers in the crags basking in alpenglow, will soon witness the unit's future from the outside. Lee is close to topping out on the unit's 60-year-old age limit and soon will have to step down. And Luk has only given himself until next October to turn things around. 'I think,' senior member William Wong Chi-cheong says, 'it's not long enough.' Luk, naturally, remains steadfast. 'I have my dreams,' he says. 'My men will answer the call.'